"Awakening" or "Enlightenment" is the understanding, the awakening from sleep, of ignorance and the experience of the Three Characteristics of Existence: impermanence, painfulness, and the absence of an unchanging self. Buddhists believe that upon reaching the state of bodhi, a being is freed from samsara, or the perpetual cycle of birth and death - awakening here means freedom from suffering.
To attain bodhi, one develops full perfection by skillfully applying 37 factors of liberation, called "Wings Toward Enlightenment." They consist of:
